Billions of parcels of parcels are shipped by train, truck, ship, and air each year. Boxes, bags, and containers in thousands of variations that have been in use for many years for protecting the parcels during transit from point of origin to intermediate transfer points and a final destination. They are continually enhanced to provide for secure parcel delivery; offering additional protection from pilferers and thieves as well damage from rodents, water ingress, and the like. Since the terrorist attacks on Sep. 11, 2001, there has been emphasis on preventing parcels from malicious tampering by persons who would intentionally introduce explosives and other dangerous substances into a parcel during transit. Inspection equipment such as Geiger counters, x-ray machines, and electromagnetic wave generators have been utilized to detect such malicious tampering.
The present invention is in the technical field of mathematical forensics. Since the early 20th century, fingerprint detection and analysis has most likely been one of the most common and important forms of forensic investigation. More crimes have probably been solved with fingerprint evidence than for any other reason. Image identification is the process of comparing two instances of recorded digital data of the edges of coloration in photographic impressions.
More particularly, the present invention is in the technical field of protecting parcels from tampering during shipment and storage by processing digital imagery data of patterns formed by surrounding a parcel with media made according to the present invention.
The invention also relates to a system for creating unique exemplar image data for a computer-implemented method. In a best embodiment, the exemplar image data is encrypted and assigned to an identifier that comprises a public key. When a subsequent second image data is produced, a computer algorithm retrieves the exemplar image data and compares the data versus subsequent second image data and provides a measure of the likelihood of tamper.